After three years of development, OOo 3.0 is finally here with a bunch of new features and enhancements. Linux Format looks at the changes and rates the suite's overall performance, and you can try it yourself by downloading a copy from here.

Unfortunately, documents I get look different in Office and OpenOffice. I suppose documents I write in OpenOffice will look different if opened with Office.

That's what pdf export is for. Unless you are working on something collaborativly, there is no real reason to send office files. Export to pdf and you can be sure everything looks they way you want it.

Of course if several people are collaborating on the same document then it's important that they're all using the same version of the same software, but this is true no matter what program you are talking about.

I'm not in the mood for gambling with my grades :-)

If it's a course about learning to use MS Office then of course you should be using MS Office. If it's a course where the layout of your final piece of work is critical to your grade, you should be using proper layout software. Other than that I can't think why OpenOffice should affect your grade.

If it's a course about learning to use MS Office then of course you should be using MS Office. If it's a course where the layout of your final piece of work is critical to your grade, you should be using proper layout software. Other than that I can't think why OpenOffice should affect your grade. "

"Send me an (editable) file that looks right when opened with Office 2003" is the only real requirement...

Usability glitches or startup times are secondary to me. As I said, 100% compatibility is the only *must have* for OpenOffice.

"Send me an (editable) file that looks right when opened with Office 2003" is the only real requirement...

You said that using OO.o would be "gambling with your grades":

I'm not in the mood for gambling with my grades

That's spreading "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" in my book. And when confronted you quickly changed the subject.

If it is that critical that the document look *exactly* as you want it, you should be using a format like PDF. MS Office documents don't print out or view exactly the same even between different versions of MS Office. Why gamble on your grades by using it?

I've published 17 books with it. Works great on my Mac and now on Linux as well now that I discovered WineFish (previously I used Kile and had trouble when I changed font size, the combo box would stick and so it was a pain to use).

yes, if layout is important (especially math intensive papers) do yourself and favor and take the opportunity to learn LaTeX.

I agree with you in principle, and as a mathematician I use LaTeX a lot. However I find doing layout in LaTeX painful. LaTeX has a default behavior of "f--k you, I know best" when it comes to layout. If you're the sort of person who doesn't care too much where your graph ends up then that's fine, but if you want a graph to appear where you want it in the text then prepare for a fight. Overriding LaTeX's default behavior isn't always as easy it could/should be

All that being said, once you manage to beat LaTeX into submission (or LaTeX has beaten you into submission) the output is excelent and I've yet to find anything I'd even consider replacing it with.